Over Budget, Behind Schedule: What’s Up With Gaming’s Biggest Kickstarters?

In February 2012, game developer Double Fine embarked upon a risky project: It turned to Kickstarter to raise a huge amount of money so it could create a game without needing a publisher. Kickstarter had worked for smaller projects with tiny budgets, but the idea of an established game developer, whose last games had been funded by industry powerhouses like Electronic Arts and THQ, using crowdfunding to raise $400,000 was a little crazy.

But Double Fine started a revolution. Since its adventure game was funded to the tune of $3.3 million, Double Fine has inspired more and more developers to turn to Kickstarter to finance big projects. The Kickstarter gold rush has seen many success stories, but the final measure of success isn't when the developers get their money -- it's when players get the final product.

At the end of 2012, WIRED named "all of the Kickstarters" among the things we most looked forward to seeing in 2013, given the number of projects expected to ship this year. With the year almost over, we check in with the 10 biggest Kickstarter games of 2012 to see where they are today.

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Broken Age

Backers: 87,142

Goal: $400,000

Raised: $3.3 million

Funded On: March 13, 2012

Original Estimated Release: October 2012

Current Estimated Release: January 2014

Tim Schafer and Double Fine provided precious little information about their project in the initial Kickstarter pitch. The adventure game, now known as Broken Age, became something of a victim of its own success.

"When we launched, all we said we wanted to do was make an adventure game with Tim writing, and to let the backers watch that unfold," said Greg Rice, producer of Broken Age.

With the original goal of $400,000, the studio planned to make a small game with a small team on a quick timeline. But after the immense response from the fans, Double Fine decided to use the extra money to scale things up and deliver something far more ambitious. "The game is definitely much better than it would have been," Rice told WIRED, "but it means that pretty quickly the plan of shipping a game six months after the Kickstarter ended went out the window."

Broken Age follows two characters — a young boy on an AI-controlled spaceship whose every need is catered to but who is growing bored, and a girl who decides being chosen as a human sacrifice to a monster isn't the honor her town considers it. It's a coming of age story about breaking out of societal norms. Naturally, there is ample room for Schafer's sense of humor to run wild. Visually, it uses modern techniques to blend the hand-drawn 2-D look of classic adventure games with 3-D elements in the background.

But as Rice said, the game's expanding scope means a much later delivery date. Double Fine ran out of money to finish Broken Age, even though it made more than 800 percent of the original goal. Double Fine's solution is to sell the first half of the game in January, use the proceeds to finish it, and deliver the final product later next year.

Update: Since the original publication of this story, Rice contacted WIRED to let us know that it has been able to secure development funds to finish Broken Age through sales of its other products. While the Early Access sales will "supplement the extra budget," he said, "we already have the extra money and won't be relying on those early sales."

Image: Double Fine Productions

Wasteland 2

Backers: 61,290

Goal: $900,000

Raised: $2.9 million

Funded On: April 17, 2012

Original Estimated Release: October 2013

Current Estimated Release: TBD

Interplay's post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland doesn't seem like the most logical choice for a sequel. Sure it was critically acclaimed and the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout series, but it came out in 1988, more than 25 years ago. But for Brian Fargo, co-founder of Interplay and the creator of Wasteland, a sequel always had been part of the plan. After forming inXile Entertainment with several fellow ex-Interplay employees, he pursued the more traditional publisher route to little avail. There just wasn't much interest in the sort of classic PC role playing game that he had in mind.

When Double Fine Adventure hit it big, Fargo saw an opportunity to return to a project that had long eluded him. The day after Schafer's Kickstarter went live, Fargo sent a company-wide email. "This is our chance," it read. "This is our chance for Wasteland."

"I stopped everything I was doing," Fargo later told WIRED, "and threw 100 percent of my energy into getting a website up right away so we could get fan feedback about not only what was important to them in the game, but what was important to them in the Kickstarter, in terms of stretch goals and backer rewards." A month later, Wasteland 2's Kickstarter went live, raising nearly $3 million, three times its $900,000 goal.

"When you bring in extra money," Fargo said, "you have two choices. One is to make the small game that you pitched and pocket the money, or two, you make a bigger game."

Now, $2.4 million -- what Fargo says inXile had to work with after Kickstarter fees and taxes -- might seem like a lot, but it depends on what you're doing. "If you're a small indie developer, you look at $2.4 million and say, 'What are they going to do with all that money,' while a larger guy will look at it and say, 'Our audio budget is twice that much, how are they going to do it?' In reality, that kind of money doesn't go a long way, so you have to be very clever in how you approach development."

What's the status now?

Wasteland 2's original Kickstarter pitch named this month as an estimated delivery date. "It's funny, because you have to put your date down on Kickstarter not knowing the scope of the game," Fargo said. "So we put a date down, but that was a very small project. Once we triple fund, and everybody says, 'Make the game much bigger,' does that date really apply anymore?"

When Fargo realized an October ship date wasn't going to happen, he decided instead to push for having a beta ready by then, opting to get at least something into backers' hands on time. The beta will deliver roughly 90 percent of the game's feature set, he says, albeit with some missing skills, sound effects, and animations here and there. But Wasteland is a narrative game, and inXile doesn't intend to give away the entire experience before release. Players will be able to explore most, if not all, of post-apocalyptic Arizona, but a large portion of the game takes place in Los Angeles — none of which will be accessible until the final release.

"It's such a transparent process," Fargo said. "I think that people aren't worried about you being late as long as you're showing updates, and you're communicating, and you're letting them touch and see things — as long as it's moving along, everybody's happy."

Screengrab: WIRED

The Banner Saga

Backers: 20,042

Goal: $100,000

Raised: $723,886

Funded On: April 20, 2012

Original Estimated Release: November 2012

Current Estimated Release: Late 2013/Early 2014

Coming from former BioWare developers Alex Thomas, Arnie Jorgensen and John Watson, The Banner Saga is a story-driven, Viking-themed, tactical turn-based strategy game. Its Kickstarter campaign asked for a mere $100,000 and was funded more than seven times over.

But it hasn't been smooth sailing. Creative director Alex Thomas lamented the difficulty of creating a Kickstarter project in an interview with WIRED GeekDad just after the campaign completed.

"We spent three days writing, filming, scoring and editing our Kickstarter video and we all sat down, watched it and... it suuuucked," Thomas said. "We decided to scrap the whole thing, hit it harder the next day and instead of trying to be clever, we just talked about what we wanted to do as honestly and passionately as we actually are."

What's the status now?

The game's Kickstarter success meant it would be able to scale up in quality, but it's never as easy as it sounds, says Thomas.

"It is interesting to see how people correlate money with content," he said, "as if you just liquify a vat of cash and pour it into a computer and voila, another set of characters!" Thomas said the extra cash did allow the team to hire more, and more talented, people.

Banner Saga's multiplayer combat portion was released as a free, standalone title called The Banner Saga: Factions in February of 2013. Meanwhile, the single-player campaign has been pushed back a number of times. While the original hope was for the first part of the single-player trilogy to land by the end of 2012, it was soon delayed well into 2013, and may possibly even slip to January 2014.

Image: Stoic Studio

Shadowrun Returns

Backers: 36,276

Goal: $400,000

Raised: $1.8 million

Funded On: April 29, 2012

Original Estimated Release: January 2013

Actual Release Date: July 25, 2013

A PC and tablet adaptation of the 1989 science-fiction/fantasy pen-and-paper roleplaying game of the same name, Shadowrun Returnsraised more than $1.8 million for its tactical turn-based combat.

What's the status now?

While the Kickstarter set an estimated delivery of January 2013, the game's overfunding meant, like many others, a later release date. A bit behind schedule, Shadowrun Returns launched on PC, iOS, Android, and Linux on July 25, 2013, to mostly favorable reviews. It currently holds a rating of 76 on Metacritic.

Screengrab: WIRED

Planetary Annihilation

Backers: 44,162

Goal: $900,000

Raised: $2.2 million

Funded On: September 14, 2012

Original Estimated Release: July 2013

Current Estimated Release: December 2013

In August 2012, Uber Entertainment, the studio behind arena fighter Monday Night Combat, launched a Kickstarter to fund Planetary Annihilation, a galactic-scale real-time-strategy game and the spiritual successor to the beloved 1990's real time strategy game Total Annihilation.

"I just think [the traditional publishing] model is deader than dead," Uber Entertainment CTO and Planetary Annihilation lead designer Jon Mavor said. "The kind of deals where you create and launch an original IP, like what we're doing with Planetary, they're just very rare. And when they do exist, they tend to be huge projects where there's tens of millions of dollars invested and it's a go-big-or-go-home type of situation. This game is just not designed to have that kind of mass market appeal."

But while developing without a publisher affords autonomy and the ability to "make the game you want," it also means that money will be tight, Mavor said. "When I originally conceived Planetary Annihilation, I did it within the context of knowing that we'd have to deliver it quickly," he said. "A lot of the decisions made were to keep the cost reasonable for the game, but still stick to the core principle of what would make the game fun."

Mavor and Uber Entertainment maximized the bang for their buck in a number of ways. First off, rather than each faction having its own set of units, such as in StarCraft, PA's factions are determined by their political ideology. One single set of units for all the factions kept the total number of units down, and the total cost with it. Another tactic was was the choice to use procedurally generated maps — that is, maps are generated at random rather than drawing from a pre-built set. Finally, Uber drastically cut down on development time by opting for no single-player campaign, a feature which essentially needs the rest of the game to be complete before proper work can even begin, which would be devastating on the piggy bank.

What's the status now?

After more than doubling its funding goal by bringing in around $2.2 million on Kickstarter, Uber faced the same overfunding conundrum as the other big Kickstarter games. However, it actually managed to stay in front of the estimated July 2013 delivery date by opening Alpha access to backers in June. Beta access followed, opening earlier this month, and Uber plans to ship the full game in December.

"I'm definitely proud of what we've done so far, and in the time frame we've done it," Mavor said. "In terms of being on track, I think we're as good as we can possibly be."

Screengrab: WIRED

Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse

Backers: 14,032

Goal: $400,000

Raised: $771,560

Funded On: September 22, 2012

Original Estimated Release: April 2013

Current Estimated Release: Late 2013

The first new Broken Sword game in approximately six years, The Serpent's Curse aims to return the popular adventure game series to its 2-D roots. The game, like its predecessors, follows American tourist George Stobbart and French journalist Nico Collard on a conspiracy-laden globetrotting adventure.

Broken Sword creator Revolution Software said in its original pitch that the traditional publisher model has prevented the studio from collecting enough royalties on the success of its past games in order to fund the development of new ones. The Serpent's Curse was the company's first attempt at self-funding a game, a move which was met with tremendous support from its fans.

What's the status now?

After achieving several stretch goals, Revolution Software moved its estimated delivery date from April to October or November of 2013. In August, it was announced that the game would be coming to PS Vita in addition to PC, Mac, Linux and mobile devices. All signs point to the game being available by the end of this year.

The goal of the Homestuck Kickstarter was to take the story and turn it into a fully interactive adventure game. The comic's millions of fans were keen on the idea, sending its funding up to $2.5 million.

What's the status now?

Andrew Hussie, Homestuck's creator, originally planned to begin work on the game in late 2013, following the conclusion of the webcomic's story. However, instead he put the comic on a two-month hiatus in April 2012, shortly following the Kickstarter's completion, in order to focus on the game.

Hussie said in a recent update that the comic would again be going on hiatus, but this time to complete its final chapters and animations. The status of the game, on the other hand, remains largely unknown. "It's coming along. I'll probably have a more substantive update on that before the end of the year," Hussie wrote recently. "There hasn't been much to report yet since it's mostly been in a high level planning and writing phase. And firming up tons of legal minutiae. Stuff like that." Doesn't sound like a June 2014 release date is in the cards if it's all still "high-level planning."

Image: MS Paint Adventures

Project Eternity

Backers: 73,986

Goal: $1.1 million

Raised: $3.9 million

Funded On: October 16, 2012

Original Estimated Release: April 2014

Current Estimated Release: TBD 2014

While Obsidian Entertainment is most well-known today as the developer of Fallout: New Vegas, its roots lie in classic fantasy role-playing games, having been formed by members of Black Isle Studios, who developed such titles as Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series as well as having published BioWare's classic PC RPG series Baldur's Gate.

In the summer of 2012, a few months after the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter, the Obsidian team was kicking around ideas for a potential Kickstarter project of its own. It settled on a project in the same vein as these "Infinity Engine" games from Black Isle — that is, a classic-style fantasy RPG with a top-down isometric camera and tactical real-time party-based combat.

Project Eternity was an immediate success, hitting its funding goal of $1.1 million in approximately 27 hours, before going on to (factoring in PayPal and a few other sources) raise around $4.2 million. The Obsidian team dove straight into pre-production on everything from implementing all the different classes that the backers funded to figuring out how to make classic 2-D areas look more contemporary with features such as dynamic lighting.

What's the status now?

"We've tried to always stick to what we talked about in our Kickstarter pitch," Project Director Josh Sawyer told WIRED via phone. "We're making a game that's essentially about exploring a big beautiful world with a lot of tactical combat and a cool story with cool companions in it. Every so often we have some crazy idea for something neat that we could add, but we know that there's so much to do already that we don't really need to throw more difficulty on it for us."

Much like Double Fine Adventure, Obsidian's initial expectation was to make a modestly-sized Infinity Engine-style game with a very small cast of characters, classes and not a whole lot of extra features.

"But with the Kickstarter," Sawyer said, "the fans basically said 'please give us these extra doodads, we want them.' So we're making a game that is much larger in scope both in terms of size and also the variety of characters you can make and interact with."

The team, which shifts around in size but currently consists of around 20 people, is now deep into production developing the core game. But while everything is going relatively smoothly, Sawyer is reluctant to discuss a release schedule.

"We're really trying to really focus on making this game the size that our fans expect it to be, as deep of an RPG system as they really expect it to be, and as polished as they really need it to be," Sawyer said. "We've had games come out that have not been very polished, and we don't like that reputation. We've been improving it over time, so with something where the release is entirely under our control, we're going to make sure that is absolutely as good as it can be."

Image: Obsidian Entertainment

Star Citizen

Backers: 34,397

Goal: $500,000

Raised: $2.2 million

Funded On: November 19, 2012

Original Estimated Release: November 2014

Current Estimated Release: Late 2014

Star Citizen is a bit different than the rest of this list, since Kickstarter was not its primary method of funding. While it did raise a hefty $2.2 million on Kickstarter, it has so far pulled in a total of more than $23 million (and counting) in funding, making it the most successful project in crowdfunding history.

Coming from legendary designer Chris Roberts, the creator of the classic space simulator franchise Wing Commander, Star Citizen is a modern take on that same sort of epic space adventure, complete with trading, dogfighting, and a persistent online universe. Speaking to WIRED via phone, Roberts says his desire to make Star Citizen stemmed from his frustration that games designed for the lowest common denominator — that is, consoles — weren't taking full advantage of his high-end PC.

"I wanted to build a PC game for the PC audience — for the people who enjoyed playing my games," Roberts said.

His original plan was to take the Minecraft route, selling access to an early alpha version of the game and using the money to fund continued development. He began developing an early prototype by investing his own money and that of a few "angel investor" friends, but after the success of Double Fine Adventure, saw an opportunity to fund the game through crowdfunding instead.

His plan was to use a crowdfunding campaign as a measure of interest. If he raised more than $2 million, his investors would be in.

Roberts already had his prototype, so the next step was just getting the campaign up and running. He put together a website that would serve as a community portal for fans of the genre to congregate, discuss the game, and if they wanted, back it. The campaign kicked off on the Roberts Space Industries website on October 10, 2012 and a week later on Kickstarter. When the initial campaign ended — roughly a month later at the conclusion of the Kickstarter — and the dust had settled, Star Citizen had raised more than $6.2 million — $2.1 million on Kickstarter and another $4.1 million on the RSI website.

What's the status now?

Unlike most Kickstarted games, the conclusion of the initial crowdfunding campaign was just the beginning. The RSI website has remained active, serving both as the community portal Roberts envisioned as well as the base infrastructure upon which the game is being built. It also has served as a storefront. $30 buys the entry-level package — basic access to the game upon its eventual completion — but more money, as much as $275 in the case of one bundle, buys different spacecraft, in-game currency, and other features. Revenue from the RSI store goes directly into funding the game, which has allowed Roberts and his studio Cloud Imperium Games to totally eschew that initial crop of investors without, he says, sacrificing on quality.

"At the moment we're incredibly pure," Roberts said. "We're basically making a really high-end game that normally only a big publisher could afford to make, but we don't have a big publisher and instead are completely community funded."

In terms of the game itself, a bit of that Minecraft-style paid alpha has stuck around, albeit in a modified form. Cloud Imperium is taking a modular approach to Star Citizen, with individual sections of the game being developed and rolled out to players independently as they are completed. While Star Citizen as a full, complete game is far from being finished, its first module, a hanger which lets players walk around and get an in-engine look at the spacecraft they have purchased, launched at the end of August.

"It automatically patches the most recent version as we release new data and content," Roberts explained. "Essentially, the game is growing on your hard drive from now until it's finally finished."

He says the team is aiming for the next chunk of content — a dogfighting module that will allow players to take their ships into combat against AI or each other — to be complete by the end of this year. Modules for planetside interaction, first-person-shooter shipboarding, and the eventual single-player alpha are slated for throughout 2014.

"It's very different from pretty much any AAA, or really any game that's out there," Roberts said. "It's a bit risky, because we can't control things as much, and if things don't work or go wrong, it's obviously a lot more public. But the interaction so far has been really positive."

Screengrab: WIRED

Godus

Backers: 24,346

Goal: £450,000

Raised: £526,563

Funded On: December 21, 2012

Original Estimated Release: Sepember 2013

Current Estimated Release: TBD

Shortly after launching the iPhone game Curiosity, Peter Molyneux's studio 22cans launched a Kickstarter for its next project: Godus. As it turned out, the two games were linked, as the "life changing experience" contained in the center of Curiosity's massive array of cubes was the chance to rule as god among gods in 22cans' next game.

As in many of Molyneux's past projects, such as Populous and Black and White, Godus will see players taking the role of a god, using their influence and actions to steer a civilization towards success or ruin.

What's the status now?

Molyneux isn't exactly known for delivering on his promises. The game named September 2013 as its estimated delivery, and despite not having the overfunding problem that some other games did, failed to make that release date. 22cans did launch a beta version through Steam Early Access, which it says is 41 percent complete.

"When you buy into the early access build, are you looking at a potentially interesting game that feels boring because it's still in development, or are you witnessing the development of a boring game that will never be particularly interesting anyway?" asks a writer for Eurogamer who played the build. Whatever the answer, it seems the full game is a while down the road.